Foresight 2 (Alpha 1) Released!

I had installed a couple of test versions over the last week or two on my test machine, but now we believe Foresight 2 is ready for wider testing. Note I say testing – this isn’t necessarily ready to be your everyday desktop, unless you’re very, very daring.

I’m very daring.

**

The good:**

The installer is fast. 7 minutes or less to install on 3 different machines.

Compiz Fusion is installed by default, but you need to run fusion-icon manually at startup, or add it to your session. This includes Emerald as well.

Avant-Window-Navigator is installed in a default installation – just need to remove your bottom panel and run it from Applications -> Accessories. Very cool!

Package Kit is the default GUI for installing updates and packages

If you liked Foresight 1.x, you’ll like Foresight 2.0. Your favorite apps including Banshee, F-Spot, Brasero and more. Codecs like Divx and MP3 working out of the box.

**What needs to be worked on:

**

The Intel video card drivers don’t work with Compiz Fusion on my laptop. It loads the window manager, but depending on the program, I either can’t see it’s contents (You don’t see any text inside X-Chat) or you can’t see the text you type, such as in the GNOME Terminal. Switching to Metacity, you’ll see the text you typed you couldn’t in Compiz.

Why is sound muted after a default install? 1.x was like that too.

The Nvidia drivers aren’t available in the repo. Stop by #foresight and ask for them, and either doniphon or myself can email them to you.

Off kernel drivers aren’t included yet, such as the IPW3945 Intel wireless driver for notebooks. (I have a 25 foot ethernet cable going to behind my TV as I type this on my laptop).

GIMP is not included in the default install. Using PackageKit or a simple conary update gimp will add it, but there’s no menu icon for it yet. (Yes, I filed a bug report).

No sound on my laptop (Intel HDA sound card). I had sound in 1.3 with the 2.6.19 kernel, but the 2.6.22 kernel with 1.4 and 2.0 I don’t have sound.

No flash on x86_64 installed by default (haven’t tried to install it yet)

Lots of packages need to be re-packaged from 1.4 to 2.0. (Now is a great time to come join the community!)

Please, please, please file bug reports on issues you run into with Foresight 2.0. While it’s quite usable, I wouldn’t recommend it for everyday use, yet. Expect things to break and lots of updates to become available.

I copied my xorg.conf file from my old install, and have Twinview working perfectly, here is your obligatory screenshot of 3560×1200:

A big congratulations to all my fellow developers, volunteers and contributors to getting this first alpha out.